In scholar Steven Shaviro’s overview, post-continuity is described as “a preoccupation with immediate effects trumps any concern for broader continuity—whether on the immediate shot-by-shot level, or on that of the overall narrative” (2010, 123). The concept is believed to be related to post-cinematic affect, in which the audience’s experience of the present moment is more concerned than the space-time continuity of the film. This also makes many films in the production process, the diachronic scene is no longer like the classic Hollywood film is put in the most important position, but focus on the impact of the scene on the senses.

This trend is reflected in the construction of film space. If the film is analyzed by structure, the traditional film is regarded as a deep mode, which emphasizes the continuity of time and space and the dual opposition mode, and explores the essence of something in this time process. post-cinema, on the other hand, is a flat mode, emphasizing synchronicity, not exploring the nature of phenomena but the relationship with other phenomena. Driven by the wave of commercialisation and mass culture, post-cinema often presents an attitude of game entertainment, developing the spectacle and impact of visual modeling to the peak. The combination of high technology in production and gamification of video style may be the most typical feature of post-cinematic space.

In traditional Hollywood films, the space of many scenes follows the same continuous editing formula, that is, establishing shot is adopted in the first shot to introduce the background, then the middle scene is used to highlight the key characters, and then the characters explain the details through dialogue in the sho-reverse pattern. Finally, close-ups emphasize the core conflict of the whole scene. However, post-cinema often jumps out of this space-time continuity and pays more attention to how to deliver a series of shocks to audiences.

The post-cinema does not abandon the continuity, because it still follows the dramatic structure of the traditional film, but moves away from the deep mode emphasizing the process of time and space, and turning to a more open spatial understanding, so that the audience has a more interactive and diversified understanding of the film space. For example, in the gunfight scene of Jhon woo’s films, although the editing is very fragmented and fast-paced, it still follows the axis principle and space-time consistency.

Therefore, post-cinema does not mean a complete break from traditional films, only from the perspective of space we also found the common characteristics of these films, the emergence of post-film means the film from the production mode to consumption, aesthetic changes, so that the film art presents a more diversified trend.

References:

Chateau, E.D. and Moure, E.J. (2020) Post-cinema: Cinema in the post-art era [Preprint]. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/j.ctv1b0fvtp?refreqid=fastly-default (Accessed: 25 November 2024).

Denson, S. and Leyda, J. (2016) Post-cinema: Theorizing 21st-Century film. Falmer: REFRAME Books.

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